


Delta

by Lapisdust



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Original Character-centric, Post Gold Morning, Pre-Book 2: Ward
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-02
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2020-07-29 04:29:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20076163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lapisdust/pseuds/Lapisdust
Summary: On an Earth cut off from the rest of the multiverse, flooded with refugees, and still reeling from Gold Morning being a super hero is hard. No Protectorate, no PRT, and a population that is hostile, traumatized, or both make it almost impossible for capes to operate within the law. What's a guy to do when the only family he has left still want to play the game?





	1. 1.1 : Knife Flight

We stopped about one hundred and fifty meters from the Meth lab. Close enough for me to sense it but far enough that the motorcycle wouldn't be audible. No one seem to take notice. I got off of the bike and stretched, windmilling my arms before doing a hands free cartwheel.  
  
“Showoff,” Symmetry said.  
  
“Just stretching. Three people … Men, none of them seem out of sorts.”  
  
“How many weapons?”  
  
I surveyed the inside of the house. One hand gun on one the men, two more in the front room hidden behind furniture including a fully automatic, and one shot gun in the room next to the lab.  
  
“Four guns. Two pistols and a full auto in the front room. What I think is a shot gun near the back.” I replied.  
  
“Knives, tasers, booby traps?”  
  
“No, who cares, and booby traps? Really? These are drug distributors not super villains.”  
  
“When you fail to mention that someone has a knife I'm the one that gets cut.”  
  
“And then you invest in some decent body armor like you should have in the first place.”  
  
She didn't respond to that. It was early in the evening, soon to be twilight, and I was hoping to have this done before it got dark, if only for Symmetry's sake. We began moving towards the house keeping the copse of trees nearest the house between it and ourselves. Ten arduous minutes of navigating through and around plant growth till we were as near to it as we could get without losing our cover.  
  
“Plan?”  
  
“The two in the front room with all of the guns need to be separated. If they both get armed this becomes a lot harder. You go to the front door and wait for me. I'll break a window in the back. If they both go to check I'll mace the one that come's out first and the next one if I can. If I yell that means you need to break down the front door. There's a couch in the front room that you can use as a weapon and if nothing else it should make a functional barrier. I doubt they will both go to the back so we should be able to get them separately. Make sense?”  
  
“Why not get them at the same time. If the guy with the gun goes out won't he know that somethings up when we kick down the door?”  
  
“Yeah but I don't want to try to breach on two guys with guns when I can probably take them down one at a time.”  
  
“If you say so. I don't like plans with a lot of steps. To many points where the whole thing can fall apart. If that happens you can see the chess board. I only see what's in front of me. I have to guess.”  
  
“Point taken.”  
  
We stood for a while, I turned the problem around in my mind and Symmetry stewed over being a chess piece. After playing the scenarios out in my head a few more times I still felt better about my complicated plan. The front room was set up to be their place of operation. I didn't want to fight them where they were strong and comfortable. I wanted to divide and conquer.  
  
“I thought it through and I'm still favoring my plan.”  
  
“Okay. I get to the front door without being seen and wait for you right?” She responded. If there was a hint of resentment in her voice I decided not to hear it.  
  
“Right.”  
  
I moved toward the house with Symmetry following behind me. We reached the side of the house and I paused. Sometimes when your about to do something dangerous there's a brief moment where self preservation tries to kick in. I think it has something to do with adrenaline hitting the nervous system. My heart rate had doubled, I was sweating despite the cool weather, and it occur to me that I'm really about to go up against people with guns; except there's nothing stopping me from calling this off, tipping the police off, and letting a SWAT team get shot at.  
  
I turned to Symmetry and she tilted her head as if to ask “what?” The chance of death weighed against the slow corrosive effect of weeks and months of silent judgment. I gave her the smallest of shrugs, 'don't worry about it,' and crept toward the back door.  
  
There was a brief moment of waiting for her to get into position. She crouched in front and slightly to one side of the door and gave me a thumbs up. I pulled a ball baring out of my belt, took aim and threw it through one of the rear windows. It flew all the way to the opposite wall and landed with a thunk. I'd begun moving back to the front as quickly and quietly as I could when the armed guy said something to his friend before heading back. So far so good.  
  
I arrived at the front, pointed to the door, brought my fist into my palm and Symmetry kicked down the door. The other guy was still sitting on the couch when the door flew open, nearly coming off its hinges. He jolted, half standing, before regaining his wits and turning to try and reach for the weapons behind the couch. By the time his hand had found one Symmetry had closed the distance and flipped the beer can and cigarette ash covered coffee table over and pressed it down on top of him. I jogged over, climbed the back of the table, reached behind the couch and pulled the gun out of his hand. I checked the safety and turned it on.  
  
“Release him.”  
  
Symmetry pulled the table off him and I pointed the gun at his head.  
  
“Up,” I ordered the thug, gesturing the muzzle of the gun toward the center of the room.  
  
He stood, wheezing; and I manhandled him to the center of the room.  
  
Put the couch in front of that door way,” I told Symmetry.  
  
She grabbed one corner and the whole couch lifted six inches into the air. The gob smacked look on our prisoner's face was kinda funny considering she'd just pressed a table on to him with like six hundred pounds of force. She got the couch in position and I positioned the guy, going to name him meat shield, between me and the doorway with the gun pointed at his head clearly visible to any one looking at us through the door way blocked by the couch.  
  
“Flatten against the wall but be ready to flip the couch,” I told Symmetry.  
  
“Now, I need you not to say or do anything, okay?” I asked Meat Shield.  
  
He made whimpering sounds and nodded slightly. A moment later his partner came around a corner and saw me hiding behind his friend with a gun. I quickly backed up and to the left while pulling Meat Shield along by the shirt collar, out of view of the door way. I was hoping that gun guy wasn't the sort of complete psycho who would shoot through his friend to try and hit me. I wasn't terribly concerned for my own safety. Meat Shield lived up to his new name with plenty of padding around his middle. I figured he'd stop a wimpy hand gun easy but I crafted this plan with the intent that no shots were fired and nobody died. I was making some assumptions about everyone acting more or less sane which considering this was a meth lab might not have been the safest choice.  
  
Gun guy appeared in the doorway, weapon pointed at us in the far left corner .  
  
“Listen motherfucker. I don't know who you are-” He said putting his free hand on the back of the couch and hiking a leg over it. That's a good armed criminal; focus on me and not on the girl on your left. “-but if you-” his center of mass was over the couch.  
  
“Flip!”  
  
The couch rose a meter into the air before flipping over. The gun man had his head slammed into the ceiling before toppling forward and landing flat on his face. As unpleasant as that must have been, I imagine the couch landing on his back is what really hurt. Symmetry slid over the top of the couch and put a foot on his wrist; instantly pinning both of his wrists to the floor.  
  
“They have powers,” Meat Shield shared, voice cracking. I should have named him Captain Obvious.  
  
I pushed him forward while hooking one of his legs and he tumbled to the floor.  
  
“Don't get up,” I told him before walking over to Symmetry and the gun man and pulling the piece from his hand.  
  
“That was a dumb plan that could have gone wrong in ten different ways,” Symmetry said crossing her arms.  
  
“I don't see what you're complaining about. It went almost exactly the way I wanted it to.”  
  
“Almost?”  
  
“You should've positioned the couch with the cushion side facing the door way rather than the back that way you could have hidden behind it and he wouldn't have been able to see you until he was standing on it.”  
  
“Why didn't you tell me?” she asked.  
  
“By the time you had it in position the gun man was coming back in. We didn't have–SHIT!”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Just noticed the third guy.”  
  
I bolted for the third guy who was on a cell phone. His heart rate was way up, and his posture screamed fear and uncertainty. I didn't know who he was calling but I doubted it was the police. I flung the door to the back room open.  
  
“Oh God; it's a cape.”  
  
I advanced on the goon and snatched the phone from his hand as he back pedaled away. He was pressed against the wall when I ended the call. The look I gave him could have cooled magma though he'd never know since my mask covered my entire face. I dialed 911.  
  
“Hello, 911 emergency services, what is the nature of your emergency?”  
  
“Hello, this is the super hero Vector,” she attempted to interrupt me but I was used to the operator trying to keep me on the line while phishing for details so I just proceeded to give her the address and enough info that the responding officers would know what they were walking into before hanging up.  
  
Symmetry was sitting on the couch which was still upside down and on top of the guy when I drag the third man to the front room.  
  
“They give you any trouble?” I asked.  
  
“Nah.”  
  
“I call the Police for a pick up so we need to zip 'em and leave.”  
  
Meat Shield and the third guy let us put zip ties on them with out any fuss but when we pulled the couch off of the last guy he kipped up and charged Symmetry. I'm not sure if some primitive part of his brain told him to always attack the smaller opponent or if he'd actually forgotten that she's the one who dropped a couch on him but either way that was a mistake. He threw a sloppy hay maker which she ducked before jabbing him in the ribs.  
  
“Two, four, eight–” some one who had never witness symmetry in a fight would probably be confused by the fact that none of her strikes seemed to force him back, only make him jolt.  
  
“Sixteen, thirty tw-Dammit. They never last past sixteen.”  
  
Gun dude had collapsed , coughing violently and looking like he was going to throw up. Symmetry grabbed an arm and pulled it behind his back. His other arm mirrored its motion and I zip tied his wrist before she could reach for her ties.  
  
“Thanks for the assist,” she said coolly.  
  
“I help you, you get annoyed. I let you deal with him, you get annoyed.”  
  
“He's twice my size.”  
  
“One hundred and sixty percent actually. Sorta wondering what he was thinking attacking the person who dropped the couch on him.”  
  
“Fuck you both,” Gun dude told us between gasping breaths.  
  
“I think you collapsed a lung … we really do need to leave. The guy in the back called in reinforcements or something.”  
  
“What? I thought you were freaking out over him because he was climbing out a window.”  
  
“Yeah, I guess he decided to let his bosses know that something was up.”  
  
“Shit. Okay, you did tell the police to expect company, right?”  
  
“Yeah, told 'em to send SWAT teams just in case whoever is sponsoring this operation shows up. If they're unprepared that's on them. Either way I don't want to be here when more people with guns show up.”  
  
“Right.”  
  
* * *  
  
We were half way back to the bike, pushing our way through the brush and trying not to trip or twist an ankle, when the car entered my range. Cars are attention grabbing in motion so I rarely miss them and this car was at least interesting because it lacked any of the features of the police and neither of the occupants seemed armed. Or at least I didn't sense any guns in the vehicle. The only thing that could be called a weapon was a knife that one of the occupants was playing with. An older, wiser me would have taken the strangeness as a warning sign.  
  
When they got to the farm house/meth lab they both got out and the one with the knife was suddenly surrounded by dozens of knives just hovering in the air around her body. That was actually a lot less concerning than the driver opening the back door to let ten quadrupeds out of the back. The size and shape would suggest big dogs, like mastiffs. The lack of detectable heart beats suggested other, scarier things.  
  
“We've got company. Two capes just showed up and they brought zombie dogs.”  
  
“Zombie dogs?” Symmetry asked.  
  
“Dog shaped things that are moving and have no heart beats. Yes, zombie dogs.”  
  
“Are they coming this way?”  
  
“Not yet.”  
  
The new cape pair had opened the front door and released the hounds to scout. They immediately set upon the three guys by grabbing their shirt collars. Meat Shield panicked. Once the dogs had all filed into the house and begun checking the rooms the two capes followed them in. The male cape called the dogs away from the three we'd left bound and spoke to them. After about a minute of interrogating the three both capes left and the dogs followed them … and the zombie dogs began sniffing around … and moving our way.  
  
“Okay, now they're coming our way.” I said. We quickened our pace as much as we could but the sun was going down and we were moving west. I could move in complete darkness with no problem but Symmetry was limited to purely human senses and there was plenty of under brush to trip over. Caution against a sprained ankle warred with the desire to escape the hell hounds. The dogs were winning. Then one of them stopped sniffing and started running straight for us.  
  
“Go.” I said trying to lace the word with as much urgency as possible without shouting. Dogs are faster than humans. Dogs can move through brush and low branches more easily than humans. I think it's to our credit that we made it out of the woods before they descended on us. There was no barking and no growling; just glassy eyes and bared teeth. I had a collapsible baton in each hand and it took every thing I had to keep them at bay while still moving towards the bike. Over the next minute we'd made fifteen feet of progress and been reduced to standing back to back with the bike still twenty feet away. Symmetry used her power to immobilize one of the dogs and was using it as a make shift bludgeon.  
  
“We need … to kill them … before the capes …show up.” Symmetry said between swings.  
  
“Put a hand behind your back,” I told her.  
  
After a moments hesitation she complied and I passed my small knife to her barely avoiding a bite aimed at my calf in the process. Symmetry began stabbing her prisoner; a half dozen evenly spaced holes appearing with every thrust. It's heart hadn't beat since coming hear so I doubted bleeding them was going to do anything.  
  
“Slit the tendons!”  
  
Symmetry complied, savagely dragging the knife across the back of the left front leg. The skin and muscle behind each leg split and Symmetry reached for another dog. She had too much attention on offense and what was in front of her and missed when one of the dogs switched targets. It sunk its teeth into her left thigh. In the time she took to notice the dog on her leg the one that she was reaching for bit her wrist. They pulled in opposite directions and Symmetry fell on her back. Two more latched on to her remaining limbs in a thrashing literal dog pile.  
  
Seeing Symmetry on the ground about to be shredded caused something to click in my mind. The wordless thought that this must end now displace every other. I reached for the pistol that I'd taken earlier, that was still in my belt, that I really should have used before now, but that I had no experience with, flicked the safety off and in the same motion aimed it at a dog near me and fired. The shot struck it in the rear leg and I realized that I'd jerked instead of squeezing the trigger. Stupid way to waste my first move. By the time the slide had chambered the next bullet I'd line up another shot. This one went straight into and through the head. On the third shot I'd notice the second had begun to collapse. The fourth was in the process of leaping at me from behind forcing me to drop into a crouch. It took it half a second to round on me and got a bullet through its face. Four shots, three hits worth counting, three remaining bullets and five mobile dogs. The gun was not going to finish this fight. Could I finish off the dogs on my own without it? If there was only two, probably. The dog that I'd failed to incapacitate with the first shot loped over to me and I smashed its jaw with the baton. A few more swings and two of the ones attacking Symmetry moved to attack me. Good. I fired at the first and it dropped. The second broke off and it took me a few seconds to recognize what happened next. The dogs retreated.  
  
I'm ashamed to admit it took Symmetry trying to stand to snap me out of combat mode.  
  
“How are you?”  
  
“Fucked up,” she said from between clenched teeth.  
  
“Can you ride?”  
  
She nodded and I helped her over to the bike.  
  
I started the bike and we began riding away. The dogs were most of the way back and the to capes were having what seemed like a heated discussion if their posture was anything to go off of. Once the dogs arrived the woman angrily yelled something and threw open a rear door for the dogs to get in. They piled in, literally climbing on top of one another. She barely gave her partner the time to get in the car before she backed up and started up the long driveway that led away from the house. She was going fast. It occurred to me that if the guy was able to create zombies he might also be able to command them from a distance and receive information from them. That would explain why the dogs left when I took out four of them in three seconds and it would explain why they were driving back to the main road. They knew we were on a bike and they knew we were going to have to pass them. Behind us was a dead end surrounded by cattle pasture. I had one right angle turn in front of me and another fifty meters after that before I'd reach the gate and where they were going to come out. And they were going to get there first. I made the turn and cranked the throttle as far as it went. This was really stupid.  
  
Unsurprisingly, the villains arrived ten seconds before me, placing their car in the middle of the road as a barrier. I was going at least seventy. There was no way to stop before I reached them and ten inches of road on either side of the car. The girl got out and a halo of knives materialized around her head. Well, that made up my mind. I drove the motorcycle into the ditch. Not the smoothest ride in the world but I don't think either of them were prepared for that. The knives began flying at us. As we shot past them the front tire blew out. I could drive a motorcycle at seventy miles per hour over uneven terrain, I might have been able to do it with a blown out tire, I couldn't do both with a passenger. I some how managed to get the bike down on it's left side sliding through dead yellowed grass and weeds. Eventually we came to a stop on the side of the road, batter, bloody but both breathing.  
  
“You alright?”  
  
“Yeah,” I replied absently. I was glad Symmetry was well enough to worry about me but my attention was on the car approaching us.  
  
The car came to a stop ten feet from us and knife girl got out. Dozens of knives materialized around her head forming a what probably would have been a pretty flower petal pattern in a different context. I had one move left. She closed the door and I drew the gun from my belt and fire at her head. In the same instant that I drew the number of knives in front of her multiplied to the point that she was completely obscured. The sound of a gun shot was followed by a terrific clatter as she and her knives fell to the ground.  
  
With some effort I got up and half limped, half jogged to the drivers side door where zombie dog guy was scrabbling to get into the drivers seat. I opened the door right before he could lock it and pointed the gun at his head.  
  
“You're going to take us to the hospital or I will put a bullet in your brain. Okay?”  
  
He froze.  
  
“Okay.” he replied.  
  
“I'm going to open the rear door and you're going to send all of the zombie dogs away. If you try to do anything with them other than send them away I'll shoot you.”  
  
I opened the rear door. The dogs exited and began moving down the road. A quick scan of the vehicle and I notice more dead beasts.  
  
“The rats under the seats, get rid of them too.”  
  
His face scrunched in frustration but he did as he was told. After that I pulled him out and forced him to help Symmetry out from under the bike and carry our bags to the back seats. As we all started towards the hospital I noticed that knife girl's heart was still beating. It was still beating when she left my range.


	2. 1.2 : Back Seat Driver

The back seat smelled. I couldn't say what the smell was. I assumed it was some sort of preservative like formaldehyde. It definitely didn't smell of dead dog which was a minor concern when I stole the car. Borrowed? Kidnapped? Whatever.  
  
“Are you hurt?”  
  
Symmetry shot me a look that said 'I don't remember you receiving a traumatic brain injury but you must have because that question was retarded.'  
  
“Sorry, I mean where and how bad?”  
  
“Back of the right thigh, stab wound. Probably broken left wrist; at least sprained. Maybe some broken ribs. I don't know,” she replied.  
  
I had some serious scrapes on my left side but I'd somehow come through mostly intact. I tried to order our next moves. If we showed up at hospital in our costumes we'd lose our secret identities. We would need to show up in our civies but I didn't want our driver to see what we looked like. I reached forward and pulled on the rear view mirror (which he wasn't using anyway) until it came off. Zombie Guy tried to look at me but I pushed his face back towards the road.  
  
“Keep your eyes forward,” I told him. He wordlessly complied.  
  
Digging through the bags I found our clothes. I started handing Symmetry her blouse and jeans before realizing she was applying pressure with one hand and the other had the sprain. Dammit, I was going to have to remove Symmetry's costume without aggravating any of her injuries.  
  
This was easier said than done as her costume was a mixture of BMX gear and literal body armor and compounded by the lack of room in the backseat.  
  
“Hold on,” I said and squeezed between the front seats. I slid the front passenger side seat forward as far as it would go, giving Symmetry as much space as possible. She stretched out a bit and I got a good look at where she was sitting. There was a big blood stain under her.  
  
“You're bleeding a lot. Where's that coming from?”  
  
“Leg,” she replied. I looked down at the inside of her thigh. There was an upsetting red patch staining the fabric and I could see the faint indent of a hand on the skin underneath. I looked up at her good hand which she had pressing hard on the back of her neck. Symmetries power had always confused me. She claimed it preferred to effect objects evenly, doing unto the left side what it did to the right, but that she could work around that and effect any part of what she touched.  
  
“I don't know how to get this off of you without aggravating the wounds.”  
  
“Cut it off.”  
  
After a moment of indecision (the costume hadn't been cheap) I complied, beginning at her shoulder and cutting down toward her injured wrist. As I got to the wrist she let out a hiss of pain and our driver looked back.  
  
“Eyes on the road.” I shouted at him, back-handing his seat's head rest. He seemed to get the message because not only did his head face forward but even his eyes stayed locked on some point in the distance.  
  
I continued to work through the costume and ruminated on what it said about my life that the only time I'd undressed a girl in the back seat of a car I was using a knife and threatening the driver with a gun. The fact that Symmetry was my cousin didn't help the sense that something had gone very wrong.  
  
  
  
* * *  
  
  
  
It was full dark when several police cars passed us with their sirens blaring. For a brief moment I was concerned that one of them might see us in the car, zombie guy driving in a skull mask and hooded robe, me in my skin tight costume matching a known vigilante, and Symmetry partially undressed and bleeding. Of course the glare of our car's head lights completely obscured us and they kept going but I was immediately reminded of our situation.  
  
Do I carry her in to the ER in costume or should I also change? What am I going to tell them happened? We were attacked by dogs after we hit one while riding. Is that even remotely believable? Where? Certainly not anywhere near the recent cape fight. After a few moments I decided that I wouldn't leave Symmetry alone if I could help it. I'd gotten her into this mess; I should at least see her through it.  
  
I unzipped the back of my costume and began the laborious task of changing in the back seat. Have I mentioned that I'm a fairly big guy and there wasn't a lot of leg room? Symmetry was politely staring out the window and Zombie Guy stared resolutely at the road, rigid from stress. That led to step two of the plan get rid of Zombie Guy. I was ninety nine percent certain he hadn't looked at either of us and even if he had it probably wouldn’t matter since we were in a dark car and Tulsa was a city of more than three hundred thousand so I rather doubted he'd recognize us. When I'd finished dressing I spoke to our driver.  
  
“Pull over.”  
  
It took him a few seconds to even indicate that he heard, then he began to turn his head, caught himself, and after a moment pulled the car over.  
  
“You are going to get out of the car, walk to the other side of the road and stand there until we leave. At no point will you look back at us. What you do after that is up to you. Do you understand?”  
  
“Yes,” he croaked.  
  
“Do it,” I told him.  
  
He obediently unbuckled his seat belt, opened the door, and walked to the other side of the road. I swapped the gun to my left hand and slid out of the back seat. Zombie guy stayed in place. I got into the drivers seat and put the car into drive. Zombie Guy remain rooted to his spot on the other side of the road as I drove away.  
  
A huge amount of tension left my body as I shoved the gun under my seat. I hadn't needed to shoot anybody else today. Anybody else … process that later. Now focus on keeping Symmetry alive. She was still in the back seat. Still conscious and still bleeding.  
  
“How are you holding up?” I asked.  
  
“Okay, I think,” she answered sounding tired.  
  
“You sure?”  
  
“No, I just fell off a motorcycle and all you can do is ask stupid questions. What do you want?”  
  
“Sorry, which hospital should we go to?”  
  
“One with an emergency room … I guess … You're the one with the navigation power.”  
  
“They'll begin looking for us in the hospitals near where we had the cape fight. That combined with the specific injuries might make it easy for them to track us down.”  
  
“I don't think hospitals just give out information on who their patients are or what injuries they've received. And who's they?”  
  
“'They' is the police or the super villains we just fought. You don't think either of them are going to be looking for us?”  
  
“Maybe … didn't you kill the knife bitch?”  
  
“Uh, her heart was still beating when we left so no.”  
  
“How's that work?”  
  
“I don't know. I think her screen of knives may have slowed down the bullet. Can we focus on the fact that we'll be at the hospital soon and I want to have a consistent alibi between the two of us.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“For when people ask what happened.”  
  
“What makes you think we're going to need to explain ourselves?”  
  
“You have what are obviously bite marks from dogs and injuries from a motorcycle crash. The scene of a cape fight has a crashed motorcycle and dog corpses. I want to have a consistent story between us as to how that happened.  
  
“Okay, what do you propose?”  
  
“I don't know. I keep turning it over in my head and all I can come up with is that we hit a dog and the bike went down then we were attacked.”  
  
“By … the dog that we hit?”  
  
“Well … we hit a dog and were attacked by other dogs, I guess.”  
  
A few moments passed in silence.  
  
“I think we'd be way better off just not saying anything. Fifth Amendment all the way,” she said.  
  
A few more moments passed.  
  
“These are our secret identities we're talking about. Don't you think we should try a bit harder?”  
  
“You're driving a stolen car. Should we try and work that into our alibi?”  
  
I closed my eyes, brought my forehead down on the steering wheel, and let out a long sigh.  
  
“We're completely screwed if anybody seriously investigates, aren't we?” I asked.  
  
Symmetry (or rather Heather, since she was out of costume) nodded. We'd been stupid. I'd been stupid. I was the planner, the worrier. What had possessed me to ride a motorcycle down a dirt road at seventy miles per hour toward an unknown cape? Stupid and suicidal. And what was our plan if we got hurt during an outing? Either use the meager medical supplies that we'd packed into the bike's bags or we were probably too injured to even ride so of course we never considered what hospital we'd end up at if we ever needed one.  
  
The hospital came into view just a few seconds after Heather fell over.  
  
“Heather?!”  
  
She murmured something unintelligible.  
  
“HEATHER!”  
  
No response  
  
I drove the car over the curb and into the parking lot, making straight for the entrance marked as the emergency room. The car skidded to a halt narrowly missing the sign. I slid out, did a half back flip half back roll over the car roof, and landed in front of the rear passenger door. Heather was completely limp in my arms as I pulled her out.  
  
I entered the ER and said: “She's lost a lot of blood.”


	3. 1.a : Collapse Crew

  
  
Divide probably wasn't sleeping tonight. The Fall Guy had needed to pick up the newest member of Collapse Crew few miles from the lab.  
  
“So let me get this straight. Y'all went to the lab, found Thomas and the others bound with zip ties, loosed the hounds, they followed a trail through the woods and caught the super heroes, the super heroes kill five of your dogs in about four seconds and you called them back. Then you heard a motorcycle start and Dagger Dance told you to get in the car, that y'all were going to cut them off. You argued against it and she threatened you?” Divide asked.  
  
“She called me a pussy/bitch; threatened to castrate me if I didn't drive her to the gate,” Beelzebub said, voice a mixture of simmering anger and exhaustion.  
  
The Fall Guy nodded at that. It was a very Dagger Dance thing to threaten.  
  
“Uh huh … so you two drove back to the road and Dagger Dance got out, stood in the way of an oncoming motorcycle, and launched knives at them driving them off the road and causing them to go into the ditch where they remained up right until she blew out both tires.”  
  
“Uh … actually she put the car across the road and stayed in front of it. She never got in the path of the cycle,” Beelzebub amended.  
  
Okay she'd been less suicidal than he'd assumed.  
  
“Then they went down and y'all drove over to see if the fall had killed them, the guy shot Dagger Dance in the head, and forced you at gun point to drive him and his partner half-way to the hospital before kicking you out. You waited till they'd left and then you called Fall Guy to pick you up. Am I missing anything?”  
  
“Um … like five or six police cars passed us when I was driving them. I assume that the police are already crawling all over the place,” Beelzebub answered.  
  
There was a long pause where nobody said anything. Finally, Divide let out a long sigh and told Beelzebub to go change out of his costume and take a shower. The kid left without comment. Divide thought he'd need the time to process what had happened. Mean while the rest of them would decide what to do about the present situation.  
  
“I'll say it if nobody else will. I'm surprised that she lasted this long with the way she acted,” Glamour said, speaking for the first time since Beelzabub returned.  
  
“I dunno, she ...” the Fall Guy trailed off, “Actually, how _did_ she last this long?”  
  
“Hitting first and hitting hard, being the scariest motherfucker in the room, not because she was the strongest but because she never hesitated to attack people she considered a threat,” Divide answered. He really should have curb that. He'd set a hard line against killing people (which she'd at least tried to follow) but had otherwise let her act like a psychopath. It had been effective at inspiring fear which was what he needed to bring much of the drug traffic in Tulsa under Collapse Crews' control. He'd praise her for it too, built up her ego for her recklessness, yet held back just enough that she'd be motivated to try even harder, be a bit more reckless. It hadn't really been a mistake either, she'd been a lose cannon back then too. If Collapse Crew hadn't recruited her they probably would have had to kill her. She was exactly the kind of crazy that would have fought (not in the cops and robber sense either) them despite the odds. Maybe if he'd wanted to Divide could have spent more time on her and this wouldn't have happened. Of course, if he was dealing in “maybes” then maybe she would have murdered him in his sleep. All things considered he and Collapse Crew were probably better off without her. That fact did not remove the cold feeling in his gut. He'd been lax and one of his subordinates had died.  
  
“I don't think she was worth the risk. How many people did she kill while working for us?” Glamour asked.  
  
“Four, and to be fair the first two were shooting at her so it was kind of justified. The times after that not so much,” answered the Fall Guy.  
  
“Not to diminish the loss of Lauren, but, I think we should discuss what we're doing in response to this,” Divide said.  
  
“We talking recruitment? Because I don't think the blurry guy would add much to our team and Gizmo made it pretty clear that he wasn't interested in joining.” Fall Guy said.  
  
“No I meant the damn super heroes that have been hitting our facilities. They've literally taken out at least one major distribution center every month for the past year and the one time that we catch them at it they kill one of ours and take the other hostage. Symmetry and Vector have shown themselves to be the biggest threat to us right now and I for one would like to remove them. Drive them out of town or kill them if we have to.”  
  
“Uh … how exactly do you expect us to do that given what you just said?” asked the Fall Guy.  
  
Divide rubbed his eyes. It was hard being the leader sometimes. The Fall Guy was intelligent but he couldn't plan, plot, or scheme. It was why he hadn't taken over the Crew despite being the logical next in line after his brother's death. Glamour was at least thoughtful but her power, background, and personality all combined to make her think defensively and evasively. She anticipated threats and voiced caution. She did not come up with plans of attack. Dagger Dance was a lousy tactician who seemed to think she was bullet proof at times but she'd understood that the best defense was and overwhelming offense. Tom (Divide couldn't take the name Beelzebub seriously) was new enough that he had no idea what his capacities were, only that he hadn't showed a lot of initiative. Divide really hoped that this wasn't going to be one of _those_ planning sessions where he had to come up with all of the ideas.  
  
  
  
* * *  
  
  
  
An hour later everyone had cups of coffee courtesy of Glamour and were going over what they and the cape boards knew about Symmetry and Vector. It wasn't much more than what they knew already. The Superhuman wiki had articles that said that Symmetry and Vector were vigilantes in the Tulsa area and a list of occasions where they were known to have been involved. Nothing on their powers or appearances.  
  
/r/superpeopletexahoma had dozens of hits about them but it mostly amounted to “I heard Symmetry and Vector did a thing” and whether they were a couple or not. According to everybody who'd fought her Symmetry had some sort of tactile telekinesis. This wasn't news to Collapse Crew or anybody else. What was less clear was what Vector's power was. Combat applicable precognition was the most common guess, followed by super hearing, enhanced timing, probability manipulation, omniscience, and one extremely long series of posts explaining how all of Vector's feats could be explained as a telekinesis power that made people forget it after he used it. As if that wasn't confusing enough a lot of people seemed to think that the full body costume indicated that Vector was one of the monster capes. Divide had passed the laptop to Tom after discovering Symmetry/MonsterVector smut. Let the new guy deal with sifting through the endless sea of crap. Divide suspected that Gold Morning had been set off by an internet post.  
  
They knew that Symmetry had been injured and that Vector had stolen Tom’s car to drive her to the hospital. They didn't know which hospital but they could extrapolate from where they'd been driving. They didn't know what either of them looked like but they knew what sorts of injuries to look for and their general builds. It was enough to find them in a building if they were together, weren't trying to hide, and where they could move freely . It was too little to go on across several possible hospitals, with prey that might still be on their guard, and in buildings were they couldn't exactly go from room to room without attracting security. And all of that ignored what either of them might do if they were in fact found.  
  
“I don't think there's anything we can do,” the Fall Guy opined. “We don't know where they are and even if we did we probably wouldn't recognize them and even if we recognized them we'd be facing an unknown level of threat. For all we know Vector's been holding back.”  
  
“If he's been holding back then that's all the more reason to hit him now while he's weak and distracted. If he holds a grudge? What if his power _is_ some sort of high end precog? If he decides he wants to take our gang out that's it, we're fucked,” Divide responded.  
  
“If he was that powerful wouldn't he have already done that?” asked Glamour.  
  
“I don't know. Tom, found any leads on there?” Divide asked.  
  
Tom started upright. “Um … n-no. Not really.”  
  
“What are … were you reading the story?”  
  
“No,” he answered a little too quickly, “I was looking at Echo and Tile's Twitter.”  
  
“Why? … What the hell do they have to do with this?”  
  
“Look we've exhausted the major information sources I know of. They're the only other hero's in town except for Quarterback. I thought maybe they'd met them at some point and dropped some hints.”  
  
Divide rolled his eyes. “If they'd dropped any hints it would have made it to the wiki. Give the computer to Glamour.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Because I said so. Also, she can display any new information on the board as she finds it,” Divide replied in a tone that suggested he was about to kick a certain newbies' ass if he mouthed off again.  
  
He made the smart choice and handed the computer to Glamour.  
  
  
  
* * *  
  
  
  
Three hours later and they were out of coffee. Grounds too, after the second pot. There were four huge boards filled with what may have been every publicly known fact about Symmetry and Vector. The Fall Guy threw a wadded up page through one of the boards to watch it pop like a soap bubble in slow motion.  
  
“Stop doing that!”shouted Glamour even as the board began to reform.  
  
Too much caffeine and too little progress. It had turned into one of those planning sessions. Divide was staring at the board with the time line trying unsuccessfully to coax a clue from the patterns of activity. The only insight to be had was that S&V like to do their heroics on the weekends which implied that they had normal Monday to Friday jobs. Interesting, but not particularly useful.  
  
“Okay this isn't working. I really thought that we could come up with someway to capitalize on what happened to Symmetry but unless we want to attack several hospitals in the hope that Vector decides to take us on alone before the police show up in force I don't think we have any way to get to him. Let's call it a night. I need a drink.”  
  
“Hells yeah. Beth, Tom, you in?” asked the Fall Guy sounding enthusiastic for the first time in the past hour.  
  
“I need to get back to my kids,” Glamour replied.  
  
“I'm seventeen so ya know … I can't,” answered Tom.  
  
Most of them filed out of the apartment that served as they're hideout and Tom's residence.  
  
“It's too bad we can't get the police to actually do their fucking jobs and deal with them for us,” Tom remarked.  
  
“What?” asked Divide.  
  
“Well it's not like they're acting within the law. You told me as often as not the people he leaves tied up at the crime scene go free by pleading that Vector planted the drugs or whatever. Entrapment, right? Besides, they're unregistered and that's a felony. I think … or is it only a felony if you get caught using the power to commit a crime?”  
  
Divide had stopped listening. A lifetime on Bet had conditioned him to think of the Heroes and officers as being on the same side. The Protectorate and police departments had worked comfortably along side one another. Vigilantes weren't technically allowed to run wild but most places were happy enough to turn a blind eye to free law enforcement so long as it didn't leave a trail of dead bodies in it's wake. This wasn't Bet. Earth Delta was significantly less cape friendly. Hell, they nearly made the records of the Superhuman Registration Act publicly available. Divide obviously hadn't registered and he still thanked God for the handful of activists that successfully argued against that stupid idea. A year and a half on Earth Delta with no Protectorate breathing down his neck and the pathetic extension of SWAT that passed itself off as a PRT and he still forgot that he lived on a different world the moment the heroes showed up. Of course, Tom had no such problem since he'd never lived anywhere else.  
  
“Guy, you told me that you'd seen a real working pay phone in some bar, right?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Let's go get those beers.”  
  
  
  
* * *  
  
  
  
The bar in question was dingy and surprisingly sedate for a Saturday night. That suited Divide just fine since he was here to make a phone call and grab a beer. He sauntered in after Ed (the Fall Guy), ordered a beer, and discretely surveyed the room. Nobody was paying either of them any attention. After a few minutes and a few sips he got up and went to the pay phone. He made another scan of the room as he dialed 911. After a surprising number of rings he heard “911 emergency services. What is the nature of your emergency?”  
  
“Listen carefully. Symmetry and Vector were recently injured. They're going to be showing up in an ER in their civilian identities. Symmetry is bleeding badly. You got it?” Divide said doing his level best to be quite to the room but clear to the person on the line.  
  
“Yes, can you -”  
  
Divide hung up. The police would either take it seriously or not. From there, well, it depended on whether the high end precog theory was correct. Couldn't hurt though.  
  
He took a look around the bar and motioned Ed to the door. There were better places to drown his guilt.  
  
“Kinda surprised you didn't just use a burner phone,” Ed said conversationally.  
  
“I really wanted the beer. Also, not sure how much I trust burner phones. They–”  
  
Ed's cell went off. He pulled it out and looked at the number. His eyes bugged out.  
  
“Who is it?” Divide asked at the same time Ed answered the cell.  
  
“Hello, is this … Lauren’s alive!” Ed said.  
  
Divide felt relief flow over him for a brief moment.  
  
“... wu? How many … where … why … the fuck!? No, don't!”  
  
“Guy, what's she saying?”  
  
“She killed six SWAT guys and she's driving a stolen cop car back to the apartment.”  
  
“Give me the phone!”


	4. 1.3 : Emergency Room

Bu-dup, bu-dup, bu-dup went the hearts in everyone's chest. Hospital staff, patients, and visitors all literally throbbed with life even sitting or laying perfectly still. And I felt the beats. I also felt the water in the pipes, the thin flickering flow of air through the ventilation, and Heather's breathing. She lay in a bed in the emergency room with and IV in her arm and heart monitor by her side. The doctors or nurses were still looking at her but they seemed pretty calm compare to the response I'd gotten when I first came in. I had to give the hospital staff props, there was zero bull shit. I came in with a bleeding girl and they had her on a gurney in less than a minute. From there they immediately put pressure on her leg. I hadn't even known her blood type when they'd asked.  
  
'Stupid', my new matra, sounded in my head again. I hadn't wanted to think about what I'd do if one of us got hurt. Either the first aid we kept on the bike was enough or we were dead. As though considering a middle ground was inviting disaster. Stupid. What had we even been thinking anyway? Going out in costume and looking for trouble wasn't noble or heroic it was unaccountable and reckless. Stupid. We'd stopped some bad people, yes, drugs and one human trafficking ring. We'd also hospitalized probably six dozen people in the process and caused at least one death. I don't know what the death ratio in police operations is but I doubt they broke as many ribs.  
  
I began running through the list of mistakes that led up to this. Shouldn't have attempted to ride past two capes at seventy miles per hour on a gravel road. Should have taken our stuff and cut through a pasture. No that wouldn't have worked. Symmetry was hurt and there wasn't anywhere to go. Shouldn't have parked so far away? No that made it possible for us to get the drop on them. Should have taken of running at the first sign that other capes were showing up? Yeah, that probably would have prevented this. New rule: always run from other capes. I counted Heather's heart beats and wondered if she'd go for it. It wasn't really her style but maybe the brush with death would be enough. Maybe she'd even give up on the whole vigilante super hero project.  
  
Fat chance. She idolized the Protectorate and believed if enough heroic capes appeared it would somehow materialize again or something and when it did we would be there with the experience and reputations to join it and something something something. It was at odds with everything the Deltans felt about capes and the fact that our status as unregistered parahumans/superhumans made us felons but that was all the more reason to be heroes and show the world how much we had to offer. How can you argue against that? “Heather it's true that we can and are helping people as vigilantes but one or both of us are going to die defending people who will happily jail us for our selflessness. Your life's ambition of joining the Protectorate was dashed to pieces by Scion's betrayal and there's literally nothing you can do to change that. We should take the selfish option and let the world solve it's own problems.” That would go over really well.  
  
I'm not a monster, I understand exactly how self-serving my attitude was. But Heather nearly bled to death. She could bleed to death next time. And I can't let her die. She's the last family I have left.  
  
  
  
  
  
* * *  
  
  
  
I'd been there for three hours when a nurse came out to speak with me.  
  
“Mr. … Wright?”  
  
“Yes,” I replied, nodding, “Isaac Wright.”  
  
“Your friend is-”  
  
“Cousin,” I interjected.  
  
“Your cousin is stable. She's resting but awake now.”  
  
I tried to school my face into a good approximation of relief. It was harder than it should have been since I'd been aware her status the entire time and I was exhausted.  
  
“She had a cut femoral artery, multiple lacerations on her arms and legs, and fractures in her left wrist and shoulder.”  
  
“What ...” I began before I realized I didn't even know what to ask. 'What should I have done differently' was at the front of my mind but it wasn't something she could answer. 'What will this cost' felt prescient but it ultimately didn't matter. We were broke. 'Would she have survived a motorcycle ride here' was one I thought of several times and never wanted answered.  
  
“What's her recovery time look like?”  
  
“Depends on the injuries but no less than eight weeks for the wrist and shoulder. You can go see her now if you want.”  
  
“Right,” I said, pushing my way out of the chair. The adrenaline and worry were starting to abate and I was becoming keenly aware that I had in fact fallen off a bike going sixty plus miles per hour. My freaky reaction time and coordination were some how able to keep me from breaking any bones but I was bruised and I had some bad scrapes on my right arm. Without anything to distract me I was feeling the hurt and exhaustion.  
  
I had to remind myself to follow the nurse and pretend I didn't already know where Heather was. They had her in a room in the back of the ER. When I entered she was staring unfocused at the wall. It took a few seconds to notice that I'd entered but her eyes flick over to us. I went over to her and pulled up a chair.  
  
“How are you?”  
  
“Not so great. My shoulder and wrist are broken,” she answered.  
  
“I heard.”  
  
I endured an awkward pause for about a minute. On one hand I could understand her not wanting to talk. On the other hand I wanted to get it out of the way.  
  
“You could have died.”  
  
She shot me an irritated look. I held her gaze.  
  
“Yes,” she admitted.  
  
“I … you … we can't keep this up.”  
  
“Is this the best time for this conversation?”  
  
“Do you know of a better one.”  
  
The nurse had left. We were as alone as we could be in a busy building. I'd know if anybody was coming our way and she knew I'd know.  
  
“Fine, yes I'm going to be half functional for a few weeks. Let's talk. How are you?”  
  
That seemed a bit non sequitur.  
  
“I'm … fine. Banged up and scared as hell but … functional.”  
  
“Good to hear.”  
  
“What's that got to do with … ?”  
  
I gestured vaguely around us, trying to sum up our situation.  
  
“Is it scary for you to go seventy down a dirt road on a bike?”  
  
“I … are you asking if I was scared?”  
  
“I'm asking if that scenario is scary to you, given your … abilities.”  
  
I actually had to think about that one. Riding, driving, and movement in general were almost effortless. The only reason for me to even keep my eyes open was traffic lights and signs. Speed and surface weren't really issues. When we first got the bike I popped a wheelie and held it for half a mile on my second try, just to see if I could.  
  
“No.”  
  
Heather nodded slightly at that.  
  
“Do you know how unnerving it is to work with you sometimes. You know where everyone is, what they are doing, and how to take them down. You tell me to do things that I just barely understand and I try to follow along. You're good at it too. I sometimes wonder if your power lets you read minds with how well you can line people up to knock them down. And you make it look effortless.”  
  
Is it weird to say that I was unused to this level of praise and it was more than a little uncomfortable.  
  
“And when we aren't on a mission I workout, practice martial arts, research the cape scene, and maintain our costumes and the bike while you spend most of your free time playing computer games and surfing the internet. You get this amazing power and it's like you don't even care. Then when people that can actually threaten us appear you decide 'eh, the zombie dogs won't be an issue' until we literally have no chance of out running them and which one of us gets injured? I do all the work and you get all of the breaks,” she said. Her tone went from tired irritation to restrained anger on that last sentence.  
  
“Okay, I …”  
  
But the response died on my lips. What could I say to that? It was all completely true and completely skewed. Of course I didn't help her with any of the extraneous stuff. Being super heroes was her project. I tagged along to protect her. I had the better power defensively. Hers was powerful up close so she got hurt more. I should have taken the arrival of other capes much more seriously. I didn't think through what kind of threat the undead canines represented until they were moving toward us. Live and learn.  
  
As I tried to pull my thoughts together into a coherent response several cars arrived at the emergency room entrance. Police cars. At the same time half of the staff moved out to meet them. In the chaos I had a hard time picking out the relevant details.  
  
“You have that look. What's going on?” Heather asked.  
  
“I don't know. There are a bunch of police cars at the entrance-”  
  
Heather stiffened and looked down at her arm with the IV in it.  
  
“-but they aren't going to cover the exits, they ...”  
  
Then it hit me, a mass in the back was a dead man. He'd bled out from several stab wounds. A few other men were in a similar, but less dire, state. All of them wore body armor and tactical gear.  
  
“They what?” Heather asked.  
  
“I think they … fought knife girl … and it didn't go so well.”  
  
We were quite as my words sunk in.  
  
“How bad?” Heather queried.  
  
I cupped my face in my hands and counted.  
  
“One dead, four injured. All from stab wounds,” I answered.  
  
I sat beside Heather; numb, abstractly glad for the numbness, and wanting to loathe myself for both feelings.  
  
  
  
  
  
* * *  
  
  
  
  
  
I was standing in front of a vending machine in the lobby when it happened. Symmetry and I hadn't eaten dinner before hitting the meth lab and as a rule I never brought my wallet on the bike. Consequentially, I had larger bills but nothing that the machine was going to accept. Things had quieted down some; though people, both hospital staff and law enforcement, were moving in and around the lobby so I didn't really take much notice of the two officers who were searching from room to room until they entered the lobby. It didn't take long for them to take an interest in me. As a _perfectly normal human_ I had no way of knowing I was being observed by the police and so I try not to show any indication that I knew something was up. After about twenty seconds of very quite discussion between the two of them they began to move towards me.  
  
“Excuse me sir, we'd like to ask you some questions,” one of the officers said.  
  
“Uh, alright,” I answered.  
  
“Why are you here in the emergency room?”  
  
“I brought my cousin here after we fell off my motorcycle.”  
  
They exchanged a brief glance.  
  
“When did this happen?”  
  
“A few hours ago. What's this about?”  
  
They exchanged another brief glance. The taller one gave his partner a small nod.  
  
“Sir, you're under arrest. Keep your hands down by your sides where we can see them.”  
  
“Under arrest for what?”  
  
“Being an unregistered superhuman with multiple counts of assault and battery with a super power.”  
  
The world stopped feeling real. I stepped back and they began yelling at me to get on the ground. Their hearts were hammering now. They were scared; fight or flight in full force. One of them pulled his taser out and pointed it at me.  
  
Could I take them? Maybe, but I'd confirm their claim in the process. Heather was still in the ER; still waiting for treatment for her wrist.  
  
“You guys are making a mistake. I'm not a cape,” I told them as I slowly lowered myself to the ground. I don't think either of them heard over their own yelling.  
  
The one not holding the taser pushed me onto my stomach and put a knee on my back. He cuffed one arm and then the other. Once my arms were secure he cuffed my ankles. As he finished his partner began reading me my rights.  
  
As the helpless panic took hold I found myself trying to telepathically contact Heather, to will her into knowing what was happening. It didn't work of course. She remain calm; completely unaware that I was being taken away. Knowing those sort of things was my power after all.


	5. 1.b : Simon Haily

May 2002 Earth Bet

Simon stared at the picture.

“I'd heard of these but this is my first time seeing photos. That's …” he trailed off searching for a more polite word than awful.

“Yeah the next guys a bit better,” said Jim as he slid the photo over. This one was of an obese man with no hair, translucent skin, and weird growths. Simon examined another photo and saw the the growths resembled shells close up. The next photo showed a tattoo on the translucent man's flesh.

“Is that a _C,_ a weird _U, or … _?” Simon asked.

“It's a C.” Jim replied.

“This is on his arm, right?”

“Yeah.”

“And the poor guy has no memory?”

“None of them do. They all remember waking up in out of the way locations, they all have the God dammed tattoo, and they all have amnesia.”

Simon stared into space and tried to visualize what kind of circumstances could create this pattern.

“I think … we need to look out for a Doctor Moreau mad science type. Do we have anybody on file like that?”

“If you don't know I'm certainly not going to know.”

Simon sighed. “Fine, I'll finish reading through these reports and then start looking through the database. I'm ninty-nine percent sure I'd know if we had somebody like that on file but it's worth checking. In the mean time I want you to get the initial paper work ready.”

“Yes sir. What's the number?”

“Hm, this will be case fifty three.” 

* * *

February 2005, Earth Bet

Simon was reading through his email for the ninth and hopefully final time. He'd spent most of the morning and part of the afternoon composing it and it represented the abridged knowledge of seven years of on and off investigation into the mutants with no memories. He'd personally interviewed dozens of people, listen to hundreds more, and even put together a sort of mutant watch aimed at getting people to call in any sightings of weird humanoid creatures. That had been more trouble than it was worth even if it did bare fruit. Instead, he'd discovered something much stranger from a seemingly separate case.

A few years ago a few villains contacted the PRT about a Protectorate member that they had interrogated with a mind control power. What they'd discovered was disturbing; the cape in question had gained his powers from drinking a vial of red-brown liquid provided by a company called Cauldron. The claims had largely been ignored but somethings had stood out to Simon. The hero had a minor physical mutation (glowing hair) which made his identity public, that public self had a lot of money before he ever gained powers, and the villains gained nothing from the claim. The last one had been what stuck with Simon. Why claim something like that, especially considering it was a clear admission of a major felony? He probably still would have forgotten if the villains making the claim hadn't disappeared completely immediately afterward. The timing was a little to exact not to be deliberate. From their he kept an eye out for any claims about drinks that provided powers. Two weeks ago he'd gotten lucky. A police raid on a drug distributor with parahuman muscle had turn up a single vial with the same logo as the mutants. The vial was currently in a PRT evidence locker across the country but he'd requested a dozen pictures of it and there was no doubt in his mind that it was the exact same logo. Initial chemical test showed the contents of the vial wasn't any drug they could test for. If the vial was really a power granting formula then they could connect it and the mutants. From there they might be able to find Cauldron and then … well if they really cracked the question of where powers came from then the sky was the limit. Simon was trying not to let his imagination run away with him but it was hard when he was on the cusp of what could be the defining moment of his career.

“Simon Haily?” 

Simon looked up to see an attractive woman wearing a fedora leaning into his office. He sat up a bit straighter and smiled.

“Yes, I'm Simon Haily.”

The woman entered his office and took a seat at his insistence. She was a tall, slim, brunette who looked to be in her late twenties or early thirties, with a slight dark cast to her skin. Mediterranean, he thought. Aside from the hat she wore a tailored black pantsuit with a white shirt, black tie, and polished dress shoes. 

“How can I help you?” Simon asked.

“Just some questions. I was wondering what the estimated rate of new parahumans per month is?”

Simon chewed on the question and wondered who'd sent her to his office. He was an investigator and intelligence analyst for the PRT not a researcher.

“Around fifteen hundred per month globally, possibly more. Most trigger events aren't public enough that they make the news so we have to wait for the parahuman in question to make an appearance.”

“And what is the ratio of heroes to villains?”

“It's about one to two in favor of the villains.”

“And why do you think so many people become villains?” 

“That's actually the subject of a lot of debate. The general opinion is that power corrupts. People get a new ability and they want to use it for self enrichment. Crimes just the fastest, and in many cases, the only way there.” 

“You sound as though you don't subscribe to that theory,” the woman said, tilting her head.

“I think it's a good explanation but it feels … incomplete. Like you give a person a gun and they don't typically feel the sudden impulse to rob a store. Or at least I didn't.” He smiled at that remark but she didn't smile back. “I guess guns aren't the best example as they're the great equalizer while powers are the opposite.”

“So what makes parahumans on average more anti-social? Certainly a two thirds rate of criminality is more than statistical noise.”

It was a question he'd actually stopped himself from asking, not because he was afraid of the answer, but simply because he didn't want to prejudice his thinking. Parahumans displayed the full range of human diversity in terms of personalities and motivations. Certain pathologies, like narcissism, tended to crop up more often than in the general population but that was to be expected. Simon liked to think he had been very successful in part because he didn't have a _generic cape schema_ coloring his perception. But faced with the open question of _what_ exactly was wrong with them he had to admit it was something big.

“I guess, if I had to speculate, it would be the nature of trigger events. The day you get powers is usually the worst day of your life up to that point and … the powers don't always leave people better off.” 

The woman in the hat nodded and a sullen silence settle over the room. Simon was about to ask her who she was and who'd sent her to his office when she spoke again.

“So you think that the dynamic would be better if people didn't have to have trigger events to get powers?”

“It's not always the events themselves so much as the backgrounds that accompany them. People in safe, supportive homes are a lot less likely to end up in trigger event worthy situations. It still happens but the people who trigger more often than not have bad home lives, suffer from psychological conditions, are involved in crime before they could ever become villains, or some combination there of.” 

“So, it's the population that capes are drawn from?”

“It's both. The event and the conditions leading up to it tend to create people who are … damaged, disconnected … ” 

“People who don't feel any obligation to society because what did society ever do for them,” the woman said, neatly summarizing what he'd been grasping for.

“Yes, basically.”

“Do you think the Protectorate and PRT will be able to cope?”

“Well I'll admit some places have been pretty hard hit but the Protectorate is an international organization. It can and does move people around to deal with specific problems.”

“And you think that will be enough if the proportion of the population with powers keeps climbing and the hero to villain ratio stays the same?”

“The Protectorate and PRT have the best people in the world. I think they can adapt,” Simon answered. He believed it but it was still a dodgy sort of answer that tried to pass ignorance off as competence.

“Would it help if you could give people powers without trigger events?”

“Uh, maybe.”

“You could supply physically and psychologically healthy people with the powers and funnel them straight into the Protectorate. Of course if more than one person got a hold of a method of empowering people it would quickly turn into an arms race. You'd want to keep the method as secret as possible. In fact you'd want to keep the very fact that there exists a method secret which would mean you'd need to get all of the people involved to agree to secrecy in the same fashion.”

“What?” 

“Thank you Mr. Haily. I believe that is all of the questions I needed to ask you,” she said, standing up and walking out of the room. Simon stared after her. What in God's name had that been about?

Simon reluctantly turned back to his email and tried to find where he'd left off. 

… _all of which indicate Cauldron's products are capable of inducing trigger events or creating parahumans without trigger events ... _

The thought connected. The woman had been speaking about Cauldron. She'd describe them exactly. 

What? How?

Simon stood and made for the door. She'd left all of thirty seconds ago; she'd still be in the building. He walked to Jim's cubicle.

“Tall woman in a fedora, did you see which way she went?”

Jim gesture toward the back of the building.

“Get security to lock the building down,” he ordered as he moved in the indicated direction. 

What had she said? What had she just said a minute ago? Parahumans, trigger events, the PRT wouldn't catch up with the rate of new villains. She jumped from one subject to another, always just a bit faster than he could reason a response.

He headed for the back of the building. The back lot was empty. He kept scanning back and forth as though she might just pop out from behind a car or tree. She didn't. She'd escaped him despite having no more than a twenty to thirty second head start. He begrudgingly headed back in only to be stopped by the lock down he'd instituted.

When he finally got back in he had a hell of a time trying to explain why he'd called the lock down in the first place. Nobody could really make heads or tail of her line of questions but it hardly seemed sinister. He excused his decision as momentary paranoia brought on by stress. Nobody questioned the claim. It was the sort of job that bred paranoia. He took a few days off. 

* * *

December 2005, Earth Bet

Simon sat and sipped eggnog. Christmas with his family was generally a quite affair. His father and uncle were politely arguing about politics, his mother and grandmother were in the kitchen trading stories and recipes, and his sister was sitting next to him watching her kids play Star Fox 3 on their brand new Nintendo Wave. 

“You're lucky you got this system early. There are still shortages expected for most products coming out of Japan and a lot of people are predicting this will be the last Nintendo console.”

“Could we not talk about _that_. Not around the kids and not during Christmas,” his sister said.

“Fine, though it's not like they are paying one iota of attention to anything we're saying.”

They continued to watch the kids play for a few minutes before she spoke again.

“Is something wrong? You've had this preoccupied look since you showed up and it has me worried.”

“My job is just taking a big toll on me,” he answered. Not technically a lie.

The conversation with the woman in the hat had derailed his life in the most bizarre fashion. 

Leaving aside how she'd known to appear on that particular day, the questions hadn't made any sense or they'd made too much sense. On one hand the string of questions and answers hadn't exactly been profound. The recitation of facts and figures available at any public library wasn't impressive and it really shouldn't have affected him. On the other hand they'd left him needing to prove that the narrative she'd implicitly spun around Cauldron was false.

Simon had set out to research the handful of public trigger events and the cape careers that had followed. Of the capes that had trigger in highly public fashions seventy six percent had become villains. It was far enough above the two to one figure that it gave him pause. More time and more research turn up equally disturbing statistics. Alarmist had been predicting the apocalypse from every conceivable direction for at least a century so those who decried capes as harbingers of doom had been soundly ignored. Closer inspection led to some disconcerting facts. There were no clear cut cases of capes adding to the economy but plenty of them hurting it.  
Insurance was higher in cape heavy areas, tinkers made only the most miniscule of additions to tech despite billions being poured into understanding their creations, and things like the Endbringers, Sleeper, and Ash Beast crept up just often enough that they were starting to alarm even the mainstream. All of this would have escaped his attention along with ninety-nine percent of the population if he hadn't desperately been attempting to prove its antithesis. 

The rate of new triggers had been increasing for the entire time that anybody had data on it. Arguments over whether it would keep going until the whole population was empowered or level off at some point tended to miss the fact that it really didn't take that many parahumans to radically alter society. The notion that the PRT and Protectorate could lose and the question of what that would actually look like had blurred with the question of Cauldron’s motives. The woman had implied that Cauldron had supplied the Protectorate with stable capes that kept the hero/villain balance manageable. Who? How many? How long had this arrangement existed?

He hadn't sent the email to the director. He hadn't told anyone what he thought he'd discovered in fact. And he was at the point where he was beginning to wonder how much of what he discovered was even true or whether his memory was distorting important information. Worst of all he wasn't sure if or how he was being watched so he wasn't sure if it would ever be safe telling somebody. He had the choice between trying to expose Cauldron and finding out exactly what kind of retribution that drew or forgetting about the whole thing

Sitting there, watching his nieces play, and unable to relax even on Christmas Simon came to a decision. He wouldn't blow the whistle on Cauldron. His uncertainty over whether it was the right thing and his uncertainty over whether they could silence him had won out against his sense of duty and propriety. It was the first (and he hope only) massive moral quandary he'd faced and even as he felt the tension drain from his body he wouldn't have describe the feeling as relief so much as emptiness bordering on apathy. 

He managed to relax as the day wore on and slept better than ever that night. 

The next morning he woke with a plain white envelope in his hand. After a full minute of just staring at the improbable slip of paper he opened the dammed thing and began to read the page contained within:

_ To the PRT's most meticulous Intelligence Analyst, Simon Haily _

_ Our organization would like to thank you for erring on the the side of discretion in dealing with us. We understand that this situation was very trying for you personally and we apologize that our secret has become your secret as well. That said, it is likely that you will encounter more evidence of our activities and that some of it may be disturbing without context and sadly we may need you to discard evidence of our operation again in the future. We trust that you grasp the importance of our operation and will make the right choices in the future. _

_ Best wishes, C _

Simon felt numb. Possibly something more than numb that he simply didn't have a word for, like some perfect balance of rising panic and abject hopelessness. Not only had they put a letter in his hand without waking him while he slept but they'd done it the exact night after he chose not to go to his superiors with what he knew. They could read his mind. It was the only explanation he could come up with that could explain everything. The woman in the hat had figured out how to manipulate him into second guessing his evidence, conclusions, and ways of thinking by reading his mind. More over she'd done it in just such a way that he spent his time confirming Cauldron’s narrative through his own research. It was the perfect trap for a very clever person, or perhaps somebody who thought they were very clever. 

What was worse is what it implied about their level of surveillance. The first time he'd met her had been in his office. It would make sense to periodically examine the minds of PRT employees and assuming range limits it would make sense to do it in the offices themselves. He was three states away when he'd finally decided not to present the evidence on Cauldron. Either They'd bothered to have him tailed over the Christmas Holiday or they weren't hampered by distance. He considered the implications of unlimited distance telepathy. Cauldron was probably literally invincible and even if they weren't they were clearly more than he could ever deal with. 

And they expected him to cover for them from this point onward. 

“Okay,” he answer the empty room.

* * *

March, 2011

“... considered in conjunction with the way you mishandled the investigation surrounding case one hundred forty three and what appears to be multiple instances of falsifying information in case files … well I'm sorry to say this but we have no choice but to terminate your employment effective immediately.”

Simon nodded. None of this was a surprise but it hurt all the same. 

“The investigation into your actions is ongoing and while no charges have been pressed the PRT asks that you remain available if we need to contact you.”

Translation: if you leave the state it can and will be used as evidence of your guilt. 

“Do you have any questions?”

Why? Why me, why like this?

“No ma’am,” he answered.

“In that case security will escort you to your office to collect your things and out of the building.”

The walk back to his office was consumed by one thought: His twelve years spent in the PRT had all been for nothing. He'd told himself he had no choice, that Cauldron could be well intentioned, that even if they weren't he'd just be putting others at risk by trying to expose them. The inevitable conclusion to this arrangement had always been that the PRT or Cauldron would take issue with something he did but he'd still hoped he might last longer. Foolish in retrospect that think that his individual efforts at obfuscation would go unnoticed by the same organization that publish new protocols for dealing with mind controllers and psychics every year for a decade. 

The security led him back to his office and he dutifully packed his personal affects, two framed photos, one of his parents and one of his sister, niece and nephew, and a Newton's cradle. At one time he'd considered even the Newton's cradle self-indulgent and slightly unprofessional. He'd been his career on so many levels that looking back he was both sad and embarrassed for his younger self. Vanity, vanity.

The security guards escorted him the rest of the way out of the building and even followed him to his car. He briefly wondered if they been ordered to or if working here bred that much paranoia. Didn't matter. He buckled up, pulled out, contemplated flipping the whole department off, and decided against it. He didn't want this to make him petty.

The drive back to his apartment had him reviewing his career in far too much detail. By the time he got home he'd decided he really needed to experience staggering inebriation. He had a bottle of whiskey he'd received as a gift and he never gotten around to regifting. He walked into his living room, intent on getting to his kitchen, when he saw the woman in the hat and suit sitting in his living room. The mixture of emotion was disorienting: anger, fear, confusion, vindication, and contempt all warred for dominance in his head. After a few moments of staring at her staring at him he continued his way to the kitchen and found the bottle. He went back into his living room and took the seat furthest from the telepath. 

“I'd offer you a drink as a guest except that I didn't invite you in and wouldn't want to reward that kind of behavior.”

He took the cap off the bottle and sipped tentatively. It burned going down which grounded him. Pain cut through the dream like quality of the moment.

“Also I forgot to get glasses … and I think I may hate you,” he added. 

“I'm on the clock so I'd turn you down anyway,” she replied bemusedly.

He gauged whether he could jump over the coffee table and break the bottle on her skull before she could dodge or draw a weapon. 

She raised an eye brow at him.

Of course she was a telepath so any idea he concocted would be apparent to her right away. He was being stupid, she held all of the cards just like the last time. He needed to find out what she wanted and do his best to grant her wishes. Or confirm in his own mind that he intended to hard enough that she thought he did.

She raised her other eye brow artfully, affecting a look of surprise that managed to appear genuine and be condescending at the same time.

Being clever wasn't going to help here and he needed to stop trying.

“I take it you aren't here to kill me since I'm still alive, so you're either here to remind me that if I so much as think of blowing your cover you'll kill me in the worst way I can imagine or you need me to do something specific during the investigation to present a certain narrative.” 

“You've got us all figured out, eh?” she asked.

He took a bigger pull from the bottle and grimaced.

“I think you already know exactly how well I have you figured out. You-” 

His voice caught and he realized he was about to start crying. He bent over, elbows on knees, and cupped his hands over his face. He hadn't felt this helpless since he was a small child. 

When he had enough control that he thought his voice wouldn't crack he asked: “What do you want?”

“I would like to offer you employment with Cauldron.”

His hands came away from his face slowly and he blinked away tears.

“What?”

“We want you to work for Cauldron. You were among the best intelligence analysts to work for the PRT and you understood enough to cover for Cauldron when we offered you little more than vague promises. I can understand if you are reluctant about joining our organization but if you take us up we can show you some of what you lost your career over.”

“I accept,” he heard himself say. Damn her. For one moment he saw himself how she must see him. He could see all of the parts of him that went into that decision. The time pressure, hopelessness, and curiosity that won out against his mistrust and outrage at being manipulated. The line of thinking that said that she would out smart him, wound around his neck, a leash or a noose. Even the praise of being one of the best intelligence analysts was aim squarely at his ego; telling him he was still smart and still valuable even at their level. 

“Excellent. Door.” she said and a rectangle appeared in the middle of the room. It took him a few moments of staring at it before his depth perception kicked in and he recognized it as a portal leading into a white hallway with florescent lights.

She gave him a sad smile and said: “I know it's been really stressful but things get better from here, okay?”

He nodded. Odd that he felt comforted by such blatant manipulation. Must be Stockholm Syndrome.

* * *

October, 2011

Simon was in the middle of his fourth check that everything was in perfect order when it occurred to him that this was probably excessive. Accord was dead and Citrine, while an ambassador, probably didn't have her former boss's insane streak. His interactions with Accord had been stressful but rewarding. Yes, the man was the sort to take out a hit on you because you forgot to put the toilet seat down but damn if he couldn't give clear and concise answers to complicated problems. It was a shame he'd been fired from his job with Watch Dog ... and that his plan to solve world hunger had included so many human rights violations ... and that the Yangband had killed him with the very cape that he'd sold them … really Accord was a monument to under utilized potential. Very ironic.

He looked at his watch and suppressed the slight twinge of panic that he was five minutes from a meeting with the Ambassadors. Deep breath in, deep breath out. Citrine was not Accord and he was as ready as he'd ever be. He'd worn a lot of hats since joining Cauldron; analyst, lab technician, delivery man. He'd watched six different people receive powers, assisted in power testing with four of them, and seen one mutation and the resulting fallout. He'd sorted, copied, digitized, and disseminated Accord's plans to various locations with an eye to both discretion and accessibility. He'd done fairly in depth research on Earths other than Bet and Aleph. 

As far as he could tell Cauldron had between twenty and forty employees with a rough fifty-fifty split between human and parahuman. Hat lady was definitely a parahuman. So was the Number Man though the extent and nature of his power was less evident. Being a math prodigy was underwhelming even if it let you manipulate the stock market. Doctor Mother's power was unclear. His best guess was that she was a _wet tinker_ who'd discovered the secret behind power selection. Then again the person behind the formulas may be entirely behind the scenes. The human employees (or at least the ones that seemed fully human) were a fairly eclectic group composed of a few parahuman studies types, medical doctors, an electrical engineer and others who's backgrounds hadn't come up. A small vain part of like to imagine that he was the most important non-parahuman on their pay roll. A larger part of him hated that he pinned his self worth on the people who'd intimidated and blackmailed him; he did his best to ignore that part.

A door opened in the space in front of him and he was greeted by the sight of Citrine in the yellow evening gown and bejeweled mask that served as her costume. Her eyes focused on him for a brief moment before quickly scanning the space behind him. The barest hint of a frown flickered across her face as he stepped through the portal and offered his hand. She shook it.

“I hope you are well ...” his eyes drifted to the black arm band, “... present circumstances aside.”

“I … we've been adjusting. I've assumed the mantle of leadership but I'm consulting with Othello more than he ever consulted with anybody,” she said and gestured to the man in a two tone mask.

“There had been a minor concern that the Ambassadors would end up absorbed into the Undersiders but it doesn't look like that's going to happen.”

“I should think not. The Ambassadors have existed for almost a decade while the Undersiders are barely a year old. I fully intend to carry on that legacy,” she said with a hint of irritation

“And Cauldron is here to supply that legacy,” he said as he put his brief case on the table and reached across the table to shake Othello's hand.

He began laying out the vials and expounding on the power's they offered. It was all in the documentation but this was Citrine's first time buying and he thought it prudent to give her the whole speil.

It took far longer than his previous meeting but he managed to make a better impression than he had with Accord.

* * *

Morning, June 20th, 2013

Florida isn't geologically active. This is the first thought that runs through Simon's mind at the start of the apocalypse. The next several were various curses and half formed bits of info on what to do during an earth quake. When the shaking subsided half of Jacksonville was underwater. Six minutes later he received a text. 

_Exodus protocols are in effect. The evacuation site for Jacksonville, Florida is __Herlong Airport. Please direct people there and make sure that refugees do not congregate so densely on the other side that they block lines of egress. _

It was with a strange mixture of purpose and numbness that he drove to the Airport. When he arrived the Doorways were already lined up and appeared to lead to another airport. A few people were milling around them on his side. As he approached the doors he could see a far larger crowd was standing around on the other side including a few police cars. He drove on through and approached the officers. 

“Hello, officer. Can you help get some traffic cones in place. A lot of people are going to be coming through the portals.”  
The officer stared at him for a long while, turned to look at the portals, and turned back to him. 

“What, exactly, is going on?” the officer asked.

“I'm from a parallel universe where the East Coast just dropped fifteen feet. We need to start moving people through the portals and we need to make sure that the roads don't become blocked.”

The officer held his gaze for a long time. He was considering whether it had been a mistake to remain in his car and what kind of message that sent when the guy finally snapped out of it and asked Simon to explain the situation to his superiors. 

* * *

June 21st, 2013

The portals had closed six hours ago. They'd closed seven times before, each time starting at the lower corners and drawing together till it formed a V shape before zipping up closed. Simon suspected this was to give people ample warning so nobody ended up bifurcated. It had worked so far, though one jackass climbed out of his car, on to the hood, and jumped through with inches to spare. Now they waited for them to reopen. The air field sat mockingly empty in the last light of the sun. Simon shivered. A storm was coming in and Simon's clothes were soaked through with sweat a few times over. 

Officer Bray, one of the men still on duty, moved up to stand next to Simon.

“When do you think they'll open again?”

“I don't know. I don't know any more than you,” Simon answered. It was the fifth time somebody had asked him since they'd closed. He'd lost count of how many times he'd been asked some inane question he had no way of knowing and after thirty six hours awake he was really not in the mood to deal with people. 

Officer Bray offered him a Styrofoam cup with steaming coffee which he took gratefully. He took a sip and grimaced. It was either the oldest, weakest cup of coffee it had ever been his misfortune to ingest or thirty six hours awake during the worst refugee crisis ever anywhere had some how robbed him of his sense of taste. Either way, it was time to sleep. He told Bray he was taking an eight hour break and made his way into the nearest building. Emergency workers of every stripe milled around or comforted the injured. About half of the people there had a thousand yard stare. Either their world had ended in golden light or they were grappling with the idea of parallel worlds and super powers moving from fiction to reality. He found an unoccupied cot and sunk into sleep.

* * *

Somebody shook Simon awake from deep sleep. 

“He's here! Scion's here! Wake up!”

Simon looked up at a police officer. He didn't recognize the man.

“Okay,” Simon responded for lack of any real response. 

“Houston. Or he was.”

“Okay, so why was Scion in Houston?”

“He leveled it.”

For five whole seconds the phrase didn't parse, then memories from the last two days came flooding back. He stumbled out of bed and walked to the TV where images of a golden beam spearing down from the sky were being shown. 

“Is this live?” he asked.

“No, it started about twenty minutes ago. Hit Canada first and moved South. Last thing we heard he was in Brazil, but he's moving so fast that he could have looped around and hit Australia.”

“How'd he get here?” somebody asked. “I mean he was on the other planet so how'd he get here? Did he come through a portal?” 

The man's voice had a tinge of mania. Simon looked around the room. The sense of repressed panic was thick. One of the officers was dialing and redialing a number, tears welling, slowly muttering prayers or cursed or both. Simon eyed the man's sidearm. 

This situation was a powder keg. It was time to leave.

He quietly made his way out of the room. The night was surprisingly chilly for summer in Florida. He passed a man smoking and waiting for the portals.

“More things in Heaven and on Earth, eh?”

“Unfortunately.” Simon replied.

“I guess you're more use to this.”

“Not really, it's my first apocalypse too.”

“Yeah … but the powers, the weirdness. You guy's had monsters, Enders?

“Endbringers … and yeah, we did. Not really commensurable though.” 

Simon slid into his car and checked that his bug out bag was where he'd left it. He started the car and checked the gas tank. A quarter of a tank. His money wasn't any good here either. He lay his head on the steering wheel and took several deep breaths. He'd figure something out, he always had. Cauldron would find him if at all possible. As for the rest of the refugees … 

* * *

It hurt. 

It hurt accepting that Cauldron was never coming back. They'd broken him, taking his sense of agency, molding him into a loyal minion, and setting him down a new path. He'd made peace with that along the way, it was inevitable and it was necessary and it had made him feel special. He'd been inducted into the most important organization in the history of the world to do some of the most interesting work in the world and … in the end … none of it had meant a damned thing. Scion destroyed the world anyway. Cauldron had either gone into hiding or died fighting him. 

He told himself ten times a day that they were gone, that even if they did still exist they weren't coming back for him. It didn't stop him from having dreams about Doctor Mother or the Number Man coming to get him. It didn't stop him from looking for a doorway in space every time an unexpected air current brushed his skin. It didn't stop him from fantasizing about the way that Cauldron would fix current circumstances if they were on this Earth. 

Simon sat in front of his small TV and watched as the Senate laid out the details of the Superhuman Registration Act. It was a reactive move. Refugees brought a lot of psycho-social baggage from Earth Bet; including the mostly unquestioned acceptance of secret identities. Gold Morning killed hundreds of million people; a bloody, ugly introduction to the cape world. Combined with the largest refugee crisis in history and things were bad on nearly every level. The obvious move was to try and rein in the bad element which in this case was the parahumans. After all if you had nothing to hide then you'd have no reason not to register … except that it would probably come with stipulations about how close you could live to a school, or make it way easier for stalkers to find you, and generally make life hell for somebody who'd just had a trigger event. 

It was possibly the worst move anybody could make for integrating parahumans into society, putting those who respected the law at a huge disadvantage. It was also the only real response Congress could take in the current zeitgeist. Villains would mostly thrive, heroes would be easy pickings unless they went full vigilante, rogues might prosper if they kept their heads down and they couldn't be press ganged into villainy … big if. Parahuman feudalism had been one of the major threats that Cauldron was trying to prevent or contain. Anybody who knew about Africa's cape situation should recognize the direction things moved and while it probably wouldn't be as bad as that it could still be really, really bad. Parahumans would be stigmatized which would drive them to be more reactive and violent which would drive the general population to greater levels of fear and persecution. It might have been ameliorated if the economy wasn't in a tail spin because there was a huge gash dividing the continent in half and millions of dead from Gold Morning. Not to mention the proliferation of doomsday cults and snake oil sales men claiming their secret techniques could grant powers. 

A cold despair crept over Simon. He faced desperation and hopelessness in the time between his understanding with Cauldron and their offer of employment. Those feelings had merged into numb panic when he was facing down the telepath. The sense of an inevitable doom that was worse than death. The world was going to crumble bit by bit, he'd watch it through the eyes of somebody that understood exactly where the mistakes were, and he wouldn't be able to say or do a single dammed thing to change any of it. He was just one more refugee, not even able to vote yet. 

Simon saw vast beings, bigger than him, bigger than human politics, bigger than the dissolution of any one world's society. A minute later the details were forgotten but sense of immeasurable scale stayed. People, society, the government, they were all just games from that height and they didn't seem so complicated anymore. He turned his attention back to the television. They were still talking about registration but it was all subtext, signaling, they weren't in control more than anyone else. But he could see the whole game board now. He could understand it better than any living human. For the first time he felt like a player rather than a game piece. 


End file.
